Leveraging Momentum

Hey, I’m glad you made it here today, because I have a very important and empowering message to share with you about leveraging momentum.

This is all about keeping yourself on track towards your biggest goals.

How well do you tap into the power of momentum in your life? Have you seen it working for you, or maybe even against you? Probably a little bit of both, if you really sit down and analyze your life.

We all go through this. We all have times where we’re on a good streak, where the momentum is working for us. But then there are also times where it really holds us back and prevents us from doing the things we really want to achieve, and even sometimes getting off our chair, off our couch to even do something very, very basic.

Momentum can be positive or it can be negative. It’s all about how you leverage it.

Right now, I’d like to share with you some tips, ideas, strategies and so on, about how to make the power of momentum work for you.

Now to get you started here, let me give you a breakdown of the three different areas I want to cover and draw your attention to. Really get you think about not only now during this presentation, but beyond, and how it can impact your days going forward.

• First and foremost, I want to talk about the power of a streak and the positive pressure it creates in your life, to keep doing the things, the positive habits that are creating the positive results that you’re wanting and needing and really desiring in your life.

• Secondly, activating momentum and doing it with a challenge. Something that pushes your comfort zones and gets you doing something new.

• Third and finally, 10 momentum killers to avoid, so that they don’t stop you from getting on this powerful streak that we’re going to be talking about.

The Power of a Streak

Let’s use a simple but common example that maybe you can relate to of habit creation, when it comes to something like dental flossing.

Flossing your teeth. A lot of people have no problem brushing their teeth because they don’t want to have really bad breath, but that extra little chore of flossing, it’s nice to have but it’s not really going to impact them if they skip it today, as long as they do it frequently enough for good hygiene.

But really, you want to floss every single day, because that’s what the dentist tells you to do and it makes your visits to the dentist more pleasant.

The power of a streak can kick in very, very efficiently for something like this. It’s an easy habit to create, every single day right before you go to bed or maybe when you wake up in the morning.

You’re going to activate the power of a streak by starting today and saying, “I’m going to floss every single day.”

You do it on day one. You force yourself to do it. You don’t really feel like it, but it’s a one-minute chore. You can convince yourself to do something for one minute, or maybe two.

And you do so the next day, and you do that for two, three or four days, and then suddenly this little psychological trigger kicks in where your mind starts going, “I’ve done this for a few days in a row now, I think I’m on day number four here, I don’t really want to break that streak.”

What’s really happening here is you’re creating a positive pressure.

This pressure is kind of like a self-identifier. It’s saying, “I’ve done something, it didn’t really take me all that effort and I’ve got this bank of successes, day after day after day in a row, and the pressure increases as each day goes by, with me successfully competing this thing. By failing to do so, the pain of not doing it is actually higher.”

You’re leveraging this interesting psychological trick on yourself that basically says not doing my new habit is actually worse than keeping it going.

For something like flossing, a minute of your time, two minutes of your time, it’s really a no-brainer. It’s not all that difficult to keep that thing going.

This positive pressure is really the catalyst that gets us into states of momentum.

This flossing example is just one little example of how it might work in your life. This can go into so many different directions and have huge impacts on much larger, more important habits that can actually change your financial situation, your relationship situation and so on.

So really think about how streaks are currently impacting you. Are you using them to your advantage? Maybe the streaks are using you in a negative way and causing you to repeat a pattern that’s actually blocking you from success and blocking you from taking the actions you know you want to be taking, to achieve the goals you want.

These are your goals. You want them. You’ve got to make sure those streaks are not working against you.

Activate Momentum With a Challenge

Let’s move onto the second phase, the second idea here, and that is activating momentum with a challenge.

You could use my example of flossing every single day, if you’re not currently a daily flosser. That’s a great example of how you can build a streak and create momentum in your life.

But the idea is that you need some kind of challenge that breaks you out of your current pattern.

It makes you look at your life and say, “I need to do something new. I need to create a new ritual, a new habit, and I’m going to start today with something simple.”

I suggest when you pick your challenge, when you create momentum in your life and you want to study how momentum impacts you from a positive direction, pick something that is not going to be a huge amount of effort, especially from a time perspective.

As I go through this, I want you to start thinking about various challenges you might want to take on in your life right now, that will help you move closer towards your goal, but challenges that can be accomplished in a relatively short period of time, because it’s not something you currently do.

It’s not something that’s currently part of your active habit set, and you want to be able to use momentum to your advantage.

So I want you to think about that as I go through these next points, and then we’re going to come back to it and I’m going to assign you a challenge to kind of kick you off and get you really started with implementing these ideas.

9 Momentum Killers

I want to bring your attention to 9 momentum killers you must avoid. If you truly want to leverage the power of momentum in your life so that it helps you to repeat solid actions, good behaviors and habits on an ongoing basis so that you can achieve your goals, then you need to be aware of these momentum killers and make sure you avoid them at all costs.

The first one is procrastination.

The ironic thing is the best way to overcome procrastination is to create momentum. The longer you wait to begin a project or new way of life or whatever habit, the more difficult it becomes.

Procrastination creates resistance, and that resistance is difficult to overcome because we perceive it as too hard to achieve, whatever it is we’re going for. What you’re really doing is avoiding the issues. Feel and think well by leaving procrastination in your rearview mirror at all times.

The second momentum killer to avoid at all costs is this four-letter word: Fear.

Fear causes you to quit what you’re doing, or what you may have been capable of doing. You stop taking risks and stop trying to move forward and often just give up, when you allow fear to run your life.

The best way to deal with fear is to conquer it, but you’ve got to do it one step at a time

So ask yourself, what would happen if you were really brave enough to create momentum with a project or a life change, or something you’re going to stop doing?

You’ll likely find that the positive results of this new momentum will outweigh the negative, and the fear will no longer stop you.

The third momentum killer to avoid is success.

This whole idea that “I’ve arrived,” and the passion is now dwindling for me to accomplish more because I’m already there.

The best thing you can do after a success in any area of your life, I don’t care where it is, is to immediately find a greater challenge, a bigger goal, a different risk to concentrate on.

You’ve already proven you can succeed in one area, but that’s just one area. There’s so much more left for you to do. So make sure you create momentum for other life challenges.

Now, the fourth momentum killer to avoid, and this is a biggie, is bad habits.

Do you have any of these? Do I? I certainly do. I’m sure you do as well. We’d all like to rectify them, but some of us have habits that are actually weakening our will and our ambition, and basically keeping us from our goals.

If you find yourself hitting the snooze button when you should be getting up, or reading emails and Facebook when you should be productive, or becoming absorbed in a television show when you should be exercising, then you’ve got some bad habits to work on.

But as you rid yourself of your bad habits one by one, you’ll create more positive momentum in your life. You’ll want to do these positive activities that have replaced your negative habits, and you’ll have this pressure we talked about earlier to keep going in that positive direction.

The only way to deal with and overcome distractions in your life is don’t let them. Think about the major distractions in your life right now, keeping you from accomplishing your goals.

Is it the television? Is it saying yes too often or surfing the net so much that you can’t even resist anymore? Use your willpower whenever possible, and some positive self-talk if needed, to get yourself back on track of what you really should be working on right now.

Notice when distraction is impacting you, and take action in the other direction so that you can keep your momentum going.

The sixth momentum killer: Negative self-talk.

I already alluded to this a little bit. There are many ways to turn a negative self-talk into positive self-talk.

Meditation may do it for some, or immersing yourself in positivity if you need to. That means getting rid of or pushing back the negative elements in your life. It could be a relationship, or even your own lack of self-confidence you need to work on. I’m not sure what it is for you.

Motivation cannot survive if you live with negative self-talk. So analyze it, catch yourself when you’re in these patterns of negative self-talk, switch it off and keep that momentum going in your life.

Speaking of motivation, the seventh momentum killer to avoid here is lack of motivation.

You may think of a great idea and you know it would take off and make you financially sound for the rest of your life if you acted on it, but if you’re not motivated to back it up with action then you may as well give that idea to someone else who will run with it.

Have you ever had an idea like that, by the way? I’m sure you have. I have, too.

Motivation creates momentum, and vice-versa, momentum creates motivation. So you want to make sure that at least in the initial phases, when we get into the challenge part of this presentation, that you use the momentum to give yourself a sense of motivation, but you also need to create that motivation in the beginning. It’s the fuel that gets you going.

Sometimes you’ll just have to create it out of thin air. Change what you focus on. Change the way you use your body. However you need to behave and act and think and feel, to create the motivation that gives you the momentum, do it. But use it to your advantage and don’t allow a lack of motivation to get in the way or stop you here.

That brings us to the eighth momentum killer, and this is a tough one for a lot of people: Failure.

Failure at something you attempt can either be the death of momentum or the catalyst that turns your failure into success.

Fear of failure prevents greatness from happening. Think about past failures and how you handled them. It could be a relationship failure, business failure. What did you do? Did you move on or get stuck in the mire of your own doubts and fears?

Or did you proceed a little more confidently? How would you do it differently, if you didn’t react the way you wanted to?

Really examine anytime failure creeps into your life, and make sure that it does not stop you from perpetuating the momentum that you know you need, that’s going to make you successful.

Finally, the ninth momentum killer to avoid is apathy.

Apathy has ruined many relationships, caused businesses to fail and really is the main reason that many teams lose big games. With apathy, momentum is sure to fail, and excuses take over your thoughts of success.

Now, you can fight apathy. You have to do it by always keeping the vision of what you want to achieve, in your mind, and reflect that in your actions. This is going to happen easily or more easily for you, as you use the power of momentum in your life.

Momentum Challenge

That brings us to the next piece here, which is your challenge.

If you think back to my dental floss example, it was actually a really powerful example because it uses the idea of doing something repeatedly, day in and day out, for just a few short days to create that positive pressure to the point where now you don’t want to stop because you’ve got all these banked up dates of successes, so to speak.

With your momentum, challenge, if you really want to see what the power of momentum can do for you, I want you to focus on the number three.

Pick three days, starting today, and for the next three days you’re going to do something to allow yourself to create momentum.

You could use the floss example. It could be anything, really. It could also be something that you do, or something that you stop doing for the next three days.

What I suggest you do is take out a pen or paper or even on your tablet or whatever device, and make a list of various habits or ideas that could fall into this momentum challenge, and pick activities or actions or habits that you can perform in a relatively short period of time, each and every day, for the next three days.

Now, your goal, and if you have to, is to force yourself to take this action every single day for three days, so that you can get on a streak.

Once day four comes, I want you to pay attention to your psychology. I want you to pay attention to what’s happening to you, from the perspective of momentum. You’ve had three wins in a row, and the pressure of losing those three wins will actually help you propel yourself forward to the point where you’ll want to do it again for day number four.

If it’s not quite there yet, then keep forcing yourself to do it, and maybe this number goes from a three to a six to a nine, I don’t know what it is for you, to the point where you no longer want to stop doing this thing because that pressure is there and you want to see how long you can go.

You don’t want to lose out on all this work you’ve done. So keep going. The number three is your initial target, but you need to keep going until you reach that point where you don’t want to stop.

Use all of these tactics and techniques I’ve told you about in this presentation, to keep you on track and help you avoid the things that are going to pull you away from this challenge.

Best of luck with it. I wish you massive success, and I look forward to hearing about all of your achievements.